From pillar to post: pan-European racism and the Roma

This week, we publish a briefing paper which documents a growing tide of hostility against Europe’s Romani communities.

Europe’s Roma face a double victimisation both as Roma and as migrants and are fast becoming the number one scapegoat for the economic crisis, argues IRR’s Director Liz Fekete in this hard-hitting review of anti-Roma hate campaigns across Europe. The report, From pillar to post: pan-European racism and the Roma, documents the failure of police and politicians to protect Romani communities from violent and sometimes deadly campaigns by the far Right. It highlights other worrying pan-European trends, such as the violent dismantling by the police of the European shanty towns and their stigmatisation in the media as ‘Roma enclaves’, which risk making anti-Roma violence the respectable face of European racism.

This 5,000-word report documents:

the dismantling of shanty towns and Romani settlements in Greece, Italy, Slovakia and France;

far-Right and neo-nazi campaigns of violence against Romani communities in Greece, Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary and the Czech Republic;

the threat posed to stateless Roma from restrictive approaches to citizenship, particularly in southern European countries such as Greece and Italy.

This is another timely and important briefing by IRR. On a related matter, with implications for marches by similar groups, see the link below to an article on a recent judgment of the European Court of Human Rights where it held that the dissolving of the Magyar Gárda organisation by the then Hungarian authorities, following their anti-Roma rallies, was consistent with the European Convention on Human Rights.

Daniel Holder, Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) Belfast.